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Kristin Johnston Largen, Ph.D. ‘02
2012 Alumna of the Year
On January 3, 2012, Kristin Johnston Largen boarded a plane bound for Jerusalem, Israel, the first of a series of four extended trips over a five month period. Subsequent locales included Varanasi, India; Kyoto, Japan; and Istanbul, Turkey. She wasn’t on the travel binge of a lifetime, though she might consider it as such. Rather Largen was conducting research in the form of lived experiences for her new book, Finding God among Our Neighbors: Toward an Interfaith Systematic Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, August 2013), the...

The GTU’s Golden Anniversary was capped by a gala at the St. Regis in San Francisco on February 28. The event brought together the faculties and administration of the member schools, in addition to alumni, students, and supporters from the community, to celebrate the uniqueness of the GTU — honoring our history and looking toward our future.
In addition to remarks by President James Donahue and Board of Trustees Chair Harold T. “Hal” Leach, Jr., invocations were given by Bishop Emeritus John S. Cummins and Rabbi Stephen Pearce; Trustee Rita Semel, faculty member and former dean Judith Berling...

Check out the online edition of the Spring 2017 issue of the GTU's Currents magazine! Highlights include an essay from our new dean, Uriah Kim, who celebrates the GTU’s present and shares his vision for its future, plus a reflection on the bridge-building power of spirituality and scholarship from our alum of the year, Jeffrey Richey. You’ll also get a glimpse of the newly remodeled collaborative learning space in our library, find updates about the Reverberating Echoes exhibition at the Doug Adams Gallery, and learn more about our upcoming interreligious conference on sustainability and the...

In this Issue:COVER STORYBeauty that Empowers by Suzanne E. Miller
FEATURESLetter from the PresidentThe GTU Creates a Doctoral Program for the 21st Century by Arthur Holder
The GTU Honors Judith Berling by Emily Wu
My Mentor, My Teacher, Judith Berling by Sophia Park
From Mosques to Museums by Doug Davidson
The GTU Celebrates the Center of Swedenborgian Studies by James Lawrence

How Seminaries Are Adapting to New Realities
by Stuart J. Moore
The handwriting is on the wall. As Americans distance themselves from the label of Christian, preferring “spiritual” or no affiliation, attendance continues to slip across mainline denominations. Schools for ministerial formation are struggling with lower enrollments and less denominational financial support. The composition of the Christian Church is changing and the seminaries must change with it.
Why does this shift matter to the Graduate Theological Union? Sometimes we focus so much on the academic programs, M.A. and Ph.D...

from Currents Fall 2015
This year, students have two more reasons to come to Berkeley and study here at the Graduate Theological Union.
Beginning this fall, the GTU will be expanding the offerings in its Master of Arts program, allowing for a new concentration in Hindu Studies, as well as new options for students in Interreligious Studies. In January, we welcomed to our faculty Dr. Rita Sherma as Director of the GTU’s Hindu Studies Initiative and Associate Professor of Dharma Studies. She will begin offering classes next fall and has already begun building capacity for a major conference and...

For almost 40 years the GTU has been a significant part of my life, a part that underscored the theological notion of vocation that each of us is called in a particular way by God to enter a path that will enable us to grow and to use our skills and potentials to make a significant contribution to the world, along a path that will lead us to our own fulfillment.
This idea of vocation or “call” has shaped my own personal history, especially where the GTU is concerned. The GTU has called me three times, the first in 1975. As I searched for graduate programs in theology, I heard a buzz about an...

By Chaitanya Motupalli
from Currents Fall 2014
Even before I came to the GTU to begin my doctoral studies in environmental ethics, two facts were glaringly evident to me. The first is that the earth and its communities—both human and nonhuman—are at a historic moment, sandwiched between the blunders of the past and the possibilities of the future. The second truth is that we humans, being the “touchstone species,” as Charles Mann puts it in his book 1491, have a unique role to play in the context of the ecological crisis, and particularly the challenges presented by climate change. As such...

From the Spring 2017 issue of CurrentsView PDF of article * View PDF of Entire Issue
By Carrie SealineThrough her work at the GTU’s Center for Jewish Studies—and a surprising friendship--Lea Heitfeld is keeping cultural memory alive and helping shape a more hopeful future.
Lea Heitfeld has been in the news a lot recently. The granddaughter of Nazis, the 31-year-old MA student at the GTU’s Center for Jewish Studies is the unlikely housemate of Ben Stern, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor. Their unusual friendship has led to interviews with national and international media including the ...

by Arthur Holder
At its February 2014 meeting, the GTU Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution that affirms the interreligious nature of the Graduate Theological Union and opens the way for other religious traditions to join the Protestant, Catholic, Unitarian, Jewish, Buddhist, and Muslim communities already represented here. The statement highlighted the representation of the world’s diverse religious traditions as essential to the GTU’s nature and integral to its mission. It went on to encourage the GTU President to work to “expand and foster representation of the world’s great...

By the Book | Pursuing Academia while in Ministry
by D. Andrew Kille (Ph.D. ’97)
After graduating with my M.Div. from American Baptist Seminary of the West in 1975, I ministered at Grace Baptist Church of San Jose for thirteen years, ten of them as the Senior Pastor.
While reading the work of Morton Kelsey, John Sanford, and Walter Wink, and attending seminars sponsored by the Guild for Psychological Studies, I became increasingly interested in the intersections of psychology and biblical studies. I asked Wink where I might undertake such a study and his reply was the GTU. I began working...

By the Book | Pursuing Academia while in Ministry
by Angela Yarber (Ph.D. ’10)
For nearly 14 years I’ve had a foot in the church and a foot in academia.
I had planned to pursue a career in the performing arts, majoring in musical theatre or dance in college. A conversion experience in a Christian church in my late teens shifted my plans for life and career. Fortunately, wonderful religion professors quickly taught me that my calling in ministry can coincide with my gifts in the arts and my deep interest in feminism. As a college freshman, I served as a youth minister.
I often describe my...

A Letter from Acting President Riess Potterveld
Although I am new to the Office of the President at the Graduate Theological Union, I have worked on behalf of the seminaries of the GTU consortium for thirteen years in a variety of roles as fund-raiser, academic dean, and president. Students and faculty have stated that a primal value for studying and teaching at the GTU has been the access to multiple institutions embodying such rich and diverse religious traditions. Individual institutions are valuable, but the whole, creatively interacting, is uniquely valuable. As president, I feel a deep...

By any standard, the Graduate Theological Union is unique. Envisioned as a grand experiment of cooperation and collaboration, the consortium overcame the early struggles of pioneering new ground in graduate theological education.
Berkeley was fertile soil for the germination of such an effort. By the 1950s, six seminaries representing a variety of Protestant traditions were located in the city – Berkeley Baptist Theological Seminary (later American Baptist Seminary of the West), Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Pacific Lutheran Theological...

By Carol Robb
from Currents Fall 2014
A 2011 survey by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland and its affiliate, the Program on International Policy Attitudes, found a solid majority (65 percent) of those who said they “believe in God” see reducing global poverty and hunger as a spiritual obligation. However, only 15 percent of those same believers said they understand preventing climate change to be a spiritual obligation. It’s not that people do not see global climate change as a problem requiring action. Most respondents affirmed the reality and importance of...

by Stuart J. Moore
The world is literally at our fingertips. Pull out your smart phone <tap tap tap> and you can Google huge libraries of information, see the world thanks to YouTube, and even converse via discussions boards, Facebook, Skype, and text. This ability to access information has revolutionized our culture, particularly how we view education.
Jody Passanisi, a.k.a. Jacqueline Pearce, (M.A. '05) with her colleague Shara Peters astutely observes in a post at Scientific American, “[E]ducated people were those who knew a great deal of information about one or many subjects...In this '...

Lauren Guerra examines the public theology of the murals of San Diego's Chicano Park
by Suzanne E. Miller
from Currents Fall 2015
GTU doctoral candidate Lauren Frances Guerra believes beauty can be transformative. “Beauty breathes hope into communities—and as such it is source of empowerment,” she contends. “But true beauty must always be connected to justice.” This core insight about the nature of beauty has shaped Guerra’s work throughout her studies at the GTU, first as a master’s student in Theological Aesthetics, and now as she pursues her doctorate in the field of Systematic and...

GTU received a $5,000 grant to conduct a research survey of religious thought related to end-of-life healthcare and, specifically, theological perspectives on withholding nutrients for terminally ill patients. The donor worked in retirement communities and faced these decisions on a daily basis. Lisa Fullam, Assistant Professor of Moral Theology at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University directed the project and will make it available to the public in the Spring. Look for more information in the next issue of Currents.

from Currents Fall 2014
The founding documents of the Graduate Theological Union describe a mission that is both ecumenical and interfaith. For more than five decades, we have lived into that mission, but today our foot is definitely on the accelerator. We are currently offering our first courses on Hindu sacred texts and Hindu comparative ethics; we hope to offer our first courses in Sikh Studies as soon as next year. The purpose of these new initiatives is to increase the representation at the GTU table of all of the major religious traditions of the world, so that scholar-practitioners...

by Stuart J. Moore
Simply put, Alan Kelchner (Ph.D. ‘03) has done it all when it comes to the Graduate Theological Union: student, alumnus, professor, trustee, and now executive staff, serving as the interim Vice President for Advancement.
After leading congregations for 25 years, Kelchner found himself responding to a calling to teach. He began a doctoral program at the GTU in homiletics, focusing on post-modernism and reader response. He observes that he continues to benefit from the uniqueness of the GTU and the extraordinary education he received here. “It was such a gift to have the...

An institution of higher learning unlike any other, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley brings together scholars of the world’s diverse religions and wisdom traditions to advance new knowledge, share inspiration, and collaborate on solutions.